Proposals for papers should be sent directly to the seminar chairs no later than 15 September2012. Please include your telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address. You should also let
the session chair know of any audio-visual needs and special scheduling requests. We activelyencourage presentations by younger and untenured scholars.Seminar chairs are reminded that all papers received up to the deadline MUST be considered.Please do not announce that the panel is closed prior to the 15 September deadline. Chairs haveuntil 30 September to send the names of participants, their e-mail addresses and the titles of theirpapers to the ASECS Business Office (asecs@wfu.edu) (Fax: 336-727-4697)
The Society?s rules permit members to present only one paper at the meeting. Members may, inaddition to presenting a paper, serve as a session chair, a respondent, or a panel discussant, but
they may not present a paper in those sessions they also chair.Please be reminded that if you submit a paper proposal to more than one session, you shouldnotify all the chairs to which you have made a submission. If you fail to notify the session chairs,they will have the right to decide between themselves in which session the paper will bepresented or if the paper will be excluded entirely.All participants must be members in good standing of ASECS or a constituent society ofISECS. Membership must be current by November 1 in order to be printed in the program and toreceive pre-registration materials. Those members of constituent societies of ISECS MUSTfurnish a snail mail address to asecs@wfu.edu to receive pre-registration materials.
Diderot and women / Diderot on women
Mary Trouille, Dept. of Languages,
Literatures, & Cultures, Illinois State U., Campus Box 4300, Normal, IL 61790-4300; Tel: (847)328-0549 & (309) 451-9449; Fax: (309) 438-8038; E-mail: mstroui@ilstu.edu
To mark the tricentennial of Denis Diderot’s birth, this panel will explore Diderot’s viewson women, the female characters in his writings, and his often complex relationships withthe women in his life.
?Beyond Recovery: New Work on Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Eighteenth-CenturyStudies’ (Roundtable)
(Graduate Student Caucus)
Devoney Looser, Tate Hall 114, Dept. ofEnglish, U. of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211; Tel: (573) 884-7791; Fax: (573) 882-5785; E-mail:looserd@missouri.edu
Eighteenth-century studies of women, gender, and sexuality are at a place that JeanMarsden rightly calls « beyond recovery. » Yet, as Marsden notes, recovery efforts do andmust continue; it is important, however, that they occur in a framework of greaterhistorical nuance and with an understanding of the multiple affiliations and contradictionsof early modern identities. In this context, what stories are left to be told, and how bestmight we tell them, whether we are dealing with more familiar or less (even un-) chartedterritories’ Proposals of 1-2 pages should either address these questions head on oroffer to present work that implicitly demonstrates these challenges and problems.Papers, when completed (6-8 pages) should engage new ways of thinking about women,gender, and sexuality in our period. We welcome proposals from graduate students inany of the multiple disciplines that ASECS represents. Faculty respondents will be pairedwith chosen graduate student presenters.
?Women and Stoicism’
(Western Society for Eighteenth Century Studies)
Alessa Johns,Dept. of English, U. of California, Davis, CA 95616; Tel: (530) 752-1696; Fax: (530) 752-5013; Email: amjohns@ucdavis.edu.
This panel seeks to increase our understanding of the impact of stoicthought on women of the long eighteenth century. How did stoic ideasaffect women in their daily lives’ How did women receive and employ
stoicism and can we talk about a gendered reception and use of thisphilosophical outlook? What forms did stoicism take in the long eighteenthcentury in women’s art, writings, politics, religious convictions, social
positions, and regarding women’s issues in general’ Did widespread andentrenched stoic notions dictate passivity for women in the face ofpolitical and domestic subordination’ Or did stoic modes of thought offerwomen a means of arguing for freedom and equality? Can we talk about anational and/or transnational reception of stoic ideas’
?Eighteenth-Century Women’s Travel Writing?
Linda Van Netten, #303 10225 117 St.Edmonton, Alberta T5K 1X7 Canada; Tel: (780) 237-9049; E-mail: vannette@ualberta.ca
This panel aims to explore how eighteenth-century women writers engaged with thevarious forms of travel writing available in their period: from travelogues and travel guides,to fictionalized travel narratives, captivity narratives, private letters from abroad, andbeyond. We seek proposals on any aspect and form of eighteenth-century women’s travelwriting.
?Mammon and Morals: Money as an Undue Attraction and its Consequences’
Charlotte M.Craig, Rutgers U., 51 Hedge Row Road, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540; Tel: (609) 452-8474; Email:craigrbcm@aol.com
In one respect in particular, the eighteenth century was not much different from ours orany other time in history?only the methods have changed: the interest in acquiring,accumulating, and increasing one?s possessions, for one?s own use as investments’tangible, or as a means of augmenting personal prestige. Persons who, however, have atendency toward mammonism, i.e. an inordinate desire for wealth and gain on any socioeconomicor intellectual level may indeed be capable of falling for the debasing influenceof mammon’used derogatorily or jokingly« for ?possession’ of »belongings’ (going backto Greek via Latin from the Aramaic). Individuals afflicted with this morally undesirablecharacteristic, which they neither care to admit nor desire to control, may come to grief.Observations and studies have been undertaken among men and women in variouswalks of life, from young and mature to politicians and others, and differing in familybackground, education, or temperament.Literature?poets, dramatists, historians, journalists and others have been fascinated bythese phenomena from various viewpoints. Some prominent works contain passagesconcerning cases which reflect some individuals’ obsession of covetousness occasionallyprogressing to other symptoms to such a degree as to lead to serious criminal behaviorwith tragic consequences.This panel, ideally comprised of three (maximum four) presenters, would identify anddemonstrate to the reader/audience specific cases, as mentioned above, whichcontribute to the development and progression of the plot.of seven monographs (which have received the MLA James Russell Lowell Prize (2007,Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and Their Poetry) and the British Council Prize forBest Book in the Humanities (1990, Daniel Defoe: His Life) ), her scholarly work hasinformed our consideration of multiple genres including poetry, biography, drama, and thenovel. Her editorial work has helped make accessible important, previously unavailabletexts, for students and general readers, and her sustained contributions to the professionas a mentor (through her graduate teaching, her NEH summer seminar, and ASECScommitments) and leader within the key organizations (she is a past president of ASECS,1992-93, and has served on numerous MLA and ASECS committees) have contributedto the climate of our profession.We proposal a panel that would celebrate and recognize Backscheider?s legacies andinfluences across multiple fields and disciplines. We would hope to receive proposalsfrom scholars in fields such as performance studies, history of the novel, biography orlife-writing, women’s studies, cultural studies, and poetry. Because we would hope tocapture the range and diversity of Backscheider?s influence, we would seek to includemore panelists in a roundtable format that would be a catalyst for both meaningfulstatements of scholarly influence and shared appreciations of the range and depth of thisscholar?s work.
« Writing Women’s Biography »
Beth Fowkes Tobin, 229 Henderson Avenue, Athens,GA 30605; Tel: (480) 203-0827; Email: btobin@uga.edu
This panel will address the problems and pleasures of writing biographies of eighteenthcenturywomen. All approaches to writing biography are welcome. Papers that address new approaches to writing biography, focusing, for instance, on social networks ratherthan exclusively on individuals, are especially welcome. Also of interest are biographicalapproaches that engage with the posthumanist decentering of human activity.
Pour connaître l’ensemble des sessions : http://asecs.press.jhu.edu/2013%20call%20for%20Papers%20website.pdf